Algedonic signal
A special algedonic (pain and pleasure) signal divides the ascent from system-one and uses its own filter “to decide whether or not TO ALERT SYSTEM FIVE” (DTS 1985: 133). Alone of enterprise signals, algedonics are “organized to break through recursivity” (HOE 1979: 407).
What Beer says
The metasystem might hear “the whole organism droning on, and simply ‘fall asleep’” (DTS 1985: 133). Alarms “do not belong to the family of management information systems at all” (HOE 1979: 406). “The algedonic signal screams: ‘ouch; it hurts!‘” Unhandled lower-recursion signals “cause mayhem at the senior management level”; unanswered, “the viable system would lose its cohesiveness” (HOE 1979: 407). system-three: “arousal filter which models the reticular formation of the brain stem” (BOTF 1981: 178). Chile meter: eudemony (BOTF 1981: 283).
Where it sits in the model
Six vertical channels absorb System One horizontal variety (First Axiom, HOE 1979: 217). Algedonics are orthogonal to that calming MIS (HOE 1979: 406) — mechanism of the law-of-cohesion (HOE 1979: 407); inter-recursive failure is the “ultimate pathology” (pathologies-of-viable-systems; HOE 1979: 408). Crossings need capacity and transducers (HOE 1979: 99, 101; DTS 1985: 47).
Textual notes
HOE six loops (1979: 142–143): happenstance — environments, operations, System One managers as a team; designed — command, system-two, audit. DTS (1985: 81–82): Corporate Intervention, Resource Bargain, operational linkages, environmental intersects, System Two, audits. DTS splits command; drops managers-as-team (pure-vsm-appendix). BOTF adds a second arousal filter in system-four (BOTF 1981: 183). Algedonic “dates from 1894”; Beer had thought he invented it (BOTF 1981: 401).
Open points
MS 1967: 47–48 unscanned in ch. 12. Equating HOE ch. 14 alarm (HOE 1979: 386) with HOE 1979: 406 is the manuscript’s reading. Draft not canon (overview).
Related
pure-vsm-part-ii-the-viable-system-model · viable-system-model · system-five · cybersyn · stafford-beer